I Am Rembrandt's Daughter (23 page)

He comes away from the fire, bearing the glowing glass before him. “I must cup the buboes on his other side,” he says to Vader, his words muffled by the beak. “You must turn him. You, too,” he says to me. “Move him slowly, as to not disturb the poisons within him.”

I join Vader at the bed, then with a stern nod from the physician, peel back the featherbed and expose Titus’s wasted figure. I keep my gaze from the hard, blackened buboes but cannot avoid the raised red spots the size of stuivers covering his pasty flesh. I clench back tears, and steeling myself against the clamminess of his skin and the foul odor of his breath, with Vader I turn him slowly onto his side. Titus coughs, a ringing bark. Magdalena cries out as the physician leans forward with his glass.

Titus opens bloodred eyes. “Bird?”

Vader’s icy voice jolts my attention. “What are those?” he growls.

My gaze flashes to Moeder’s coral beads, coiled in the dent left in the mattress by Titus’s body, then to the impression made by the beads in Titus’s flesh. The physician draws back.

“Moeder’s beads,” I say. Magdalena’s moeder watches fearfully, pressing her daughter’s face against her shoulder.

“Where did you get them?” Vader demands.

“You. You gave them to me when she died.”

“I would have never!” Vader exclaims.

I glance at the physician, his eyes unreadable behind his leather goggles. I lower my voice. “You threw them at me, Vader. When she died.”

Vader looks wildly at the physician. “I did not know what I was doing.” He rakes his hand through his hair. “Get them away! Now!”

“But they protect him from harm.”

“Who told you that drek?”

I cower from the rage building in his face. “Mijnheer Bruyningh—”

“I knew it! I knew I could see it on your face!” He snatches up the necklace, then dashes it to the wall. Beads from the broken strand click on the tile floor.

“Get out,” Vader growls. “Run to your Bruyningh. I was a fool to think I could stop you. What are you waiting for? Go!”

“Mijnheer van Rijn!” Magdalena’s moeder bleats from her chair, causing Magdalena to sob. “You are deranged!”

I back toward the door. “Go!” he shouts, his voice breaking. “Let me be with my son.”

I am running. I am running past peddlers and ladies and dogs. Past gentlemen and horse carts and preachers. Past lepers and dung piles, past nursemaids and children. I am running and running, until at last, with my legs on fire and my head bursting with agony, I am running down the Street That Is the Name of Money.

At the tall house with the many green shutters, I pound on the door.

After an eternity, as I pant and hold my throbbing head, Carel answers.

He takes a step backward. “What are you doing here?” he exclaims.

“Titus is ill!”

His shocked gaze travels up and down my disheveled clothes. “You shouldn’t be out.”

The words burst from my dry mouth. “He has the tokens upon him.”

Carel’s eyes widen. He puts his door between us. “Cornelia, what are you thinking?”

I cannot make sense of it. He must not understand. My brother is in trouble.

I step closer. “I’ve nowhere to go.”

Carel wards me off with the door. “Cornelia, please. You need to go home. You’re spreading the sickness. You know how I fear it!”

“I—I thought—”

“I’m sorry, Cornelia” He shuts the door.

I take one numb step backward, two, then after a long blank moment, turn, only to find myself stumbling directly into a man’s open arms. I cry out before I recognize who it is: Nicolaes Bruyningh.

I smell a whiff of wine as he holds me. “Why, Cornelia, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“You mustn’t come near me! The plague is upon Titus and he is dying.”

It is only then I feel the full meaning of the words. I hear myself sob.

Mijnheer Bruyningh gathers me to him, enveloping me in his scent of wine and smoke. “Shh, child. Shh.”

I push away from him. “No, mijnheer, you mustn’t touch me. I’ve been exposed. Carel has just sent me away.”

Mijnheer Bruyningh lets me go but makes no move to distance himself. “The boy’s a fool. He does not recognize his own cousin.”

Shaking with confusion and sorrow and fear, I swipe at my face with my sleeve. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He glances over his shoulder, then sighs heavily. “Odd time, odd place, to tell you this. But one does not get to choose the timing of these things, does one? They seem to choose themselves.”

He sighs, resigned, as I lift my blurry gaze.

“Come with me, child, you had better step inside.”

Chapter
32

I sit in a big chair in Nicolaes Bruyningh’s front room, surrounded by heavy wood furniture, blue and white pots filled with spidery plants, and parchment maps on the leather-paneled walls. Blue curls of pipe smoke, scented of overripe cherries, drift by. The air smells of all these things and of a man’s spicy flesh—the smell, to my mind, of a rich bachelor’s lair. In my shaking hand, a fine china cup rattles against its saucer like chattering teeth.

Nicolaes Bruyningh puffs at his pipe and watches my hand. “You are cold?”

It is the second of September. I would be warm if I were not so numb. I shake my head.

“Do not fear—this tobacco smoke will kill the contagion. You are safe here.”

My thin voice is swallowed up by the plushness of the room. “I must get back to Titus.”

“Now, now. Drink some tea, it will be good for you.”

I watch nervously as he picks up a silver goblet from the carpet-lain table next to him, takes a deep draft, then puts it down. “I had better just come out with it—the quick cut is the less painful.” He breathes deeply. “Well, this is it, then: I got Hendrickje with child.”

I stare at him in shock, then down at my clinking cup. What does he mean? Had Moeder had another child before me?

“When she first told me, I did not know what to do. I went to my older brother, Jan”—he lowers his head at me—” Carel’s vader, as I did for advice in all matters great and small after our own vader died. I was but twenty-two and unsure of myself. As green as new cheese.” He sucks on his pipe. “Well, my brother was not pleased, I am sorry to say. He argued that Hendrickje was below us—her vader was but a sergeant in the army, and she, a housemaid to a painter. He said she might very well model naked for his students like a common whore.”

I splash warm tea upon my hand, then watch it trickle into my sleeve.

“I assured my brother that Hendrickje would never do such a thing.” He studies me, puffing his pipe. “You see, I thought I knew her well. I had spent much of that year, the year Rembrandt painted my portrait, visiting her at Rembrandt’s house, and I continued to visit her there almost daily for another two years after that. I told Rembrandt I was interested in his other works in progress.” He laughs. “I, who prefer maps to the made-up doodlings of artists!”

I wait as he fills his glass, then takes another pull on his goblet. If he didn’t like paintings, why had he asked me for more of my vader’s works?

“Well,” he says, swallowing his drink, “in all that time, I had never witnessed even a whiff of impropriety on Hendrickje’s part. If anything, I thought she kept her distance from her master. They never exchanged so much as a glance in my sight. But my brother was not convinced. He asked me, ‘Is this the sort of person with whom you wish to spend your life?’”

I look down at my lap, though through the smoky haze, I can feel Mijnheer Bruyningh’s eyes upon me.

“You see, Cornelia, I thought she was. I had given her the coral necklace as a pledge toward our future. You should have seen how happy that made her, just a simple coral necklace. I might as well have given her a shipload of jewels. I can still see her sweet face glowing as I tied it around her neck. We were in Rembrandt’s courtyard.” He sighs. “Pink roses were blooming on the trellis. I picked her one, to go along with the necklace, and tucked it behind her ear. From then on, pink roses were our flower. I see she planted one in the courtyard when she moved to the Rozengracht—your house.” He brings his glass to his lips. “Her happiness gave me such pleasure.”

As he drinks, I turn toward the sound of a child’s laughter outside the open window. How I wish to escape! But he speaks again, his words pinning me to my seat like a spider binding a moth in its web.

“My brother’s attitude confused me,” he says. “Weeks earlier, I had brought Hendrickje home for him to meet. I had felt sure he would see my reasons for loving her. He’d been cool to her then, but to be cool was his way, so I thought little of it. I thought he’d come around. So when I told him of Hendrickje’s news—of
our
news—I expected his blessing. Instead—” He draws a breath, then purses his lips. “He was very harsh.”

His brother is Carel’s vader. The same man who forced Carel to give up painting … and me. I shudder.

“I was stung into inaction. For three long weeks, I did not go to her. My brother said, ‘You gave her a gift, didn’t you? The little necklace? Let her keep it. You owe her nothing.’ When I told him she would be crushed, he said, ‘Better a disappointment now than years of unhappiness trying to fit into Kloveniersburgwal society.’ He said I knew as well as he that a sergeant’s daughter would never be accepted.

“Then I asked him, ‘What about our child?’ He lifts his goblet, pausing before he drinks. “He said, ‘Maybe it will die.’

I put my cup on the table, hating him and his brother for treating my moeder this way. What did Moeder do with the baby? Why did she never tell me of it? Have I another big brother or sister in the world? And then I remember Titus. I start to rise. “I must go.”

“Sit,” says Nicolaes Bruyningh.

I shrink back.

“Hear me out. I was wrong, Cornelia. It took me three long weeks to figure it out, but finally, I came to my senses. That Saturday morning when I woke up, it was as clear to me as an Antwerp diamond: no matter what my brother thought, I wanted Hendrickje. I wanted our child.

“I rushed out of the house, my brother shouting after me. When I got to Rembrandt’s, I checked the courtyard. No Hendrickje. I checked the kitchen. No Hendrickje. I bounded up the stairs to ask Rembrandt if he might know where she was. I threw open the studio door.” He draws a breath, then lets it out slowly. “She was sitting before him, naked, my beads wrapped in her hair.”

I bow my head. It is a long time before I lift it, but when I do, he is puffing on his pipe, waiting behind his veil of smoke.

“You know the painting of which I speak, don’t you?” he says quietly. “I can see it in your eyes.”

“The picture in the attic,” I whisper.

“I see. Is it still there?”

I cannot swallow the lump that chokes me. So this is the picture he was seeking when he asked to buy one of Vader’s older “biblical” works. Does he really think I would give it to him and expose Moeder in this way?

“Has anyone seen it?” he asks. “I suppose he could pass it for a depiction of Bathsheba going to King David’s bed, make a few guilders from it. God knows Rembrandt needs them.”

Suddenly, I remember Neel mentioning Vader’s painting of Bathsheba. He has seen the picture. But would he have recognized the model? “I do not think so,” I murmur, sick with humiliation.

“I would not want your moeder seen that way.”

I frown in fierce agreement, though even after seeing my moeder shamed, Neel has not spoken out against her.

Bruyningh rests his head in his hand, pushing his graying yellow curls from his ruddy face. “After I saw her with Rembrandt like that, I ran off. And I did not go back—not for several years. I thought she was his then. Or at least that she was not the girl I thought she was.” He looks up. “You do understand, don’t you, Cornelia?”

Why did Moeder do it? Why did she choose Vader over Bruyningh, and model for Vader in the worst possible way? And more importantly—what became of the baby?

Nicolaes Bruyningh smiles with one side of his mouth. “In the years after that, my brother tried to make matches for me. A rich young widow from Haarlem. An alderman’s sister who lived on the Prinzengracht. Johanna de Geer’s comely niece. But I couldn’t marry, Cornelia, not even if it was the Stadholder’s own daughter.” He shakes his head as if wet. “So I threw myself into business. Helped Jan raise his children. Went to sea and did some things that I wasn’t proud of.”

He drinks long from his goblet, then wipes his mouth. “But I loved your mother, Cornelia; I couldn’t get her out of my head. And truth be known, I loved our child, too.”

I can stand it no longer. “Then where is it?”

He levels his gaze at me. “Oh, my dear, I thought you understood. The child is you.”

Chapter
33

Through rotted-cherry tendrils of pipe smoke, I look at my soap-chapped hands, now clenched on my lap. These are Bruyningh hands. A rich man’s blood runs through them. Ship-owning blood. Who is this girl called Cornelia? She is a stranger to me.

I hear the glug of wine as Nicolaes Bruyningh refills his goblet. “Do you not remember seeing me as a little one?” he asks as he pours. “I would walk by your house, just to get a glimpse of you.”

An image fights its way into the turmoil in my brain. I see the Gold Mustache Man, pushing back his hat to listen to me, the bristly gold hair of his mustache shining in the sun. My heart swells. How I wanted him to be my friend, to be my vader. The being inside me had yearned for him, blood calling out to blood, knowing something that I did not.

Now the image of the younger Gold Mustache Man dissolves into the present Nicolaes Bruyningh, clean shaven, hard faced, and with his head cocked as if listening for my thoughts. He smiles as if he hears them. “You liked the doll, didn’t you?”

Even as I picture my precious ivory-faced doll, my mind wanders to another place. I am feeling the rain soaking my hair and beads pressing into my palm as my insides roil in misery. I see the Gold Mustache Man, slipping on the bricks, running away.